Daniel Defoe eBook

Formidable as the list of these works seems, it does
not represent more than Defoe’s average rate
of production for thirty years of his life. With
grave anxieties added to the strain of such incessant
toil, it is no wonder that nature should have raised
its protest in an apoplectic fit. Even nature
must have owned herself vanquished, when she saw this
very protest pressed into the service of the irresistible
and triumphant worker. All the time he was at
large upon bail, awaiting his trial. The trial
took place in July, 1715, and he was found guilty.
But sentence was deferred till next term. October
came round, but Defoe did not appear to receive his
sentence. He had made his peace with the Government,
upon “capitulations” of which chance has
preserved the record in his own handwriting.
He represented privately to Lord Chief Justice Parker
that he had always been devoted to the Whig interest,
and that any seeming departure from it had been due
to errors of judgment, not to want of attachment.
Whether the Whig leaders believed this representation
we do not know, but they agreed to pardon “all
former mistakes” if he would now enter faithfully
into their service. Though the Hanoverian succession
had been cordially welcomed by the steady masses of
the nation, the Mar Rebellion in Scotland and the sympathy
shown with this movement in the south warned them that
their enemies were not to be despised. There
was a large turbulent element in the population, upon
which agitators might work with fatal effect.
The Jacobites had still a hold upon the Press, and
the past years had been fruitful of examples of the
danger of trying to crush sedition with the arm of
the law. Prosecution had been proved to be the
surest road to popularity. It occurred therefore
that Defoe might be useful if he still passed as an
opponent of the Government, insinuating himself as
such into the confidence of Jacobites, obtained control
of their publications, and nipped mischief in the
bud. It was a dangerous and delicate service,
exposing the emissary to dire revenge if he were detected,
and to suspicion and misconstruction from his employers
in his efforts to escape detection. But Defoe,
delighting in his superior wits, and happy in the
midst of dangerous intrigues, boldly undertook the
task.

CHAPTER VIII.

LATER JOURNALISTIC LABOURS.

For the discovery of this “strange and surprising”
chapter in Defoe’s life, which clears up much
that might otherwise have been disputable in his character,
the world is indebted solely to Mr. William Lee.
Accident put Mr. Lee on the right scent, from which
previous biographers had been diverted by too literal
and implicit a faith in the arch-deceiver’s
statements, and too comprehensive an application of
his complaint that his name was made the hackney title
of the times, upon which all sorts of low scribblers
fathered their vile productions. Defoe’s
secret services on Tory papers exposed him, as we